han to
kindle in the minds of their successors a love of excellence and of
glory?

[Illustration: GENTILE BELLINI: S. DOMINIC

(_London: National Gallery, 1440. Canvas_)]

For Messer Pietro Bembo, then, before he went to live with Pope Leo X,
Giovanni made a portrait of the lady that he loved, so lifelike that,
even as Simone Sanese had been celebrated in the past by the Florentine
Petrarca, so was Giovanni deservedly celebrated in his verses by this
Venetian, as in the following sonnet:

O imagine mia celeste e pura,

where, at the beginning of the second quatrain, he says,

Credo che'l mio Bellin con la figura,

with what follows. And what greater reward can our craftsmen desire for
their labours than that of being celebrated by the pens of illustrious
poets, as that most excellent Tiziano has been by the very learned
Messer Giovanni della Casa, in that sonnet which begins--

Ben veggio, Tiziano, in forme nuove,

and in that other--

Son queste, Amor, le vaghe treccie bionde.

Was not the same Bellini numbered among the best painters of his age by
the most famous Ariosto, at the beginning of the thirty-third canto of
the "_Orlando Furioso_"?

But to return to the works of Giovanni--that is, to his principal works,
for it would take too long to try to make mention of all the pictures
and portraits that are in the houses of gentlemen in Venice and in other
parts of that country. In Rimini, for Signor Sigismondo Malatesti, he
made a large picture containing a Pieta, supported by two little boys,
which is now in S. Francesco in that city. And among other portraits he
made one of Bartolommeo da Liviano, Captain of the Venetians.

Giovanni had many disciples, for he was ever most willing to teach
anyone. Among them, now sixty years ago, was Jacopo da Montagna, who
imitated his manner closely, in so far as is shown by his works, which
are to be seen in Padua and in Venice. But the man who imitated him most
faithfully and did him the greatest honour was Rondinello da Ravenna,
of whom Giovanni availed himself much in all his works. This master
painted a panel in S. Domenico at Ravenna, and another in the Duomo,
which is held a very beautiful example of that manner. But the work that
surpassed all his others was that which he made in the Church of S.
Giovanni Battista, a seat of the Carmelite Friars, in the same city; in
which picture, besides Our Lady, he made a very beautiful head in a
figure of S